Janaina Wagner (1989) works across film, drawing and installations that combine references from art history, cinema, and literature. Utilizing fiction to discuss the relationships of limits and control that human beings establish with their surroundings, her work presents a critical understanding on how notions of progress and legacy are articulated through a constellation of tales, facts, myths, images and memories.

With bachelor’s degrees in both fine arts and in journalism, and a middle school video teacher, Janaina develops her plastic work in a “decoupage” process, intertwining the real and the imaginary and producing a collage of fragments from several narratives.
Her work is part of important collections, such as KADIST, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de São Paulo (BR), Instituto Inhotim (BR), Galeria Municipal do Porto (PT) and coleção moraes-barbosa (BR).

She is a PhD candidate at Le Fresnoy-Studio National des Arts Contemporains (FR) and is currently developing her first feature film, the experimental documentary The Bag of the Night.

Quando o segundo sol chegar / um cometa nos teus olhos II (da série de storyboards) (2025) concludes the artist’s research trilogy on the Transamazônica Highway, along with Curupira e a máquina do destino (2021, 25′) and Quebrante (2024, 23′).

The work presents a glimpse of a fallen star — a fleeting glow announcing the approach of a Second Sun and the transformation heralded by its appearance. The piece unfolds as an imaginative exercise constructed within our eyes: a day when the planet’s stones, and the remnants of fallen comets and meteors, would return to the sky. The work is a free adaptation of Spiral Jetty (Robert Smithson), Autobiography of Red (Anne Carson), and The Ravishing of Lol Stein (Marguerite Duras).